No Falling Allowed (No Kissing Allowed) (5 page)

Margo cringed a little. “I know what you’re thinking. But please consider it. Weddings are massive events, and I know you would love it once you thought about it. It’s very you, all designer stuff and attention to details and creating a feel. You always talk about those things, so I thought…” She trailed off at what must be a look of utter disgust on my face. Wedding planners were all cheesy smiles and fake attitudes, and though that was a part of my world, I never thought of myself as fake or cheesy.

Apparently, Margo had.

“Plus, Annalise is a pro all the way. She is nothing like the planners you’ve worked with here. You will adore her. I promise.”

Swallowing, I picked the card up from where I’d accidentally dropped it onto the floor and then stood. “Thank you, really. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

Margo walked around to hug me, and then opened her door. “I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too.” Suddenly the weight of what was happening washed over me, and I understood why Janey had cried so hard. Working at the Met with Margo and Janey and the others had been amazing and fun. I didn’t want to leave.

“Ryan has your things packed up, and he’s waiting for you downstairs. I’m sorry…it’s policy.”

I nodded, my body drained of all warmth and replaced by an icy chill unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I was getting fired. No, I
was
fired. My father had been right after all.

I started down the hall, an empty shell of a person.

“Oh, and Grace?”

I turned around, though I didn’t remember consciously deciding to do so. “Yes?”

“Think about the job.”

I nodded again, unable to conjure the will to do anything else, and disappeared back into the elevator, my heart so heavy I wondered how I stood at all.

Now what?

…

It took every bit of willpower in my body to pull myself out from under my duvet and into the shower, because I’d all but coated myself in Ben & Jerry’s, and I needed to get ready for Friday night dinner with my parents. The last thing I wanted to do was tell them that I’d been fired from the job they never viewed as a real job in the first place. But there was no lying to Rick Soaring. He would know the moment he saw me, and I’d have no choice but to spill the truth and endure the ridicule that was sure to come.

The only saving grace—ha, like this Grace had ever been saved from anything—was that I had looked up Perfectly Wedded, and they were not the tacky, glittery shop I’d envisioned. Annalise—along with photos of her “creations,” the word she used instead of “wedding”—had appeared in numerous fashion and bridal magazines. She’d planned weddings for some of the top names in Manhattan, including a few family friends. So, surely that gave the job a little clout, right?

Probably not.

I rang my parents’ doorbell and waited for Frederick to answer, then smiled wide when I saw him. He was probably the only other person who understood how painful these dinners were for me. He’d been with my parents since I was a kid, so he’d seen me through everything, and though I’d had my share of nannies growing up, Frederick was the only person on the staff to stay.

Which was why when he took one look at me, his face wrinkled into a frown, and his gray eyebrows threaded together. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I whispered, hoping Mom wasn’t near enough to have heard him. But I’d never been lucky where Mom was concerned.

“What do you mean, ‘What happened?’” Mom swept into the room, the picture of glamour. Her black hair was swept into a low bun, not a hint of gray within its strands, despite her never having dyed it. Her face, on the other hand, had received its fair share of work—regular Botox and filler, eyebrow lift, chin tuck, and likely a mess of other procedures that I had no idea about. She wore a jacquard silk shirtdress with simple black Louboutins and diamond jewelry that I would suspect were fake if worn by anyone else. She had a decidedly Jackie-O quality to her, and despite our differences, I still found myself enamored when in her presence.

“Nothing happened. I was just up late last night, so I’m tired today. Nothing more.”

Mom studied me with that X-ray vision mothers possessed, and I wondered how she managed to know me so well, despite her rarely being around me when I was young. She traveled with Dad, attended charity events, all while one of my nannies handled parenting me. As a young girl, I used to wish I had siblings, but as I grew older, I learned that friends were as good as sisters. Better even. You chose your friends, and I’d chosen very well with Cameron and Lauren. Or maybe I was just lucky they befriended me.

“You do look tired. Are you out of product? Do I need to schedule you an appointment with Inya?”

Deep breath. Long, deep breath. Then I realized in my effort to breathe, I’d scrunched my brow. Mom stared at the space between my eyebrows like it had personally offended her.

I relaxed my face. “No, Mom. I’m fine.” I passed off my coat to Frederick and followed Mom into the sitting area while we waited for dinner to be announced. Briefly, I wondered what Mom or Dad would do if I invited a boy here, if I shook up our organized, cookie-cutter life by adding another person to the mix, one who might not fit so well into our world. The thought both made me want to laugh and cringe with fear—for myself and the hypothetical boy. After all, my Dad wasn’t an easy man to impress.

“White wine today, please,” I said, ignoring the look I received from my mom, who expected me to drink club soda, despite the fact that I was no longer fifteen.

Frederick passed over the wineglass, and I sipped it tentatively, hopeful that I could make it through half of dinner before the interrogation began.

But then Dad stepped into the room, grabbed the scotch neat Frederick had readied for him, and sat immediately beside me. “Joseph tells me there were layoffs at the Met.”

Joseph. Dammit. I had forgotten Dad had a friend on the board. Wait, Dad had a friend on the board. Shouldn’t I have been safe, then? Unless…

“You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” He glanced at Mom, who had the decency to look away.

I jumped up, anger taking over. “You told him to lay me off. You had me fired!”

As calm as ever, he took a sip of his drink. “I didn’t have you fired. Joseph called me when they were working through the list. He knew I had goals for you outside of your work there and felt this was the right time to explore those goals. I agreed.”

“You had no right to do this!”

His eyes flicked to me, finally full of the fire that burned just below the surface. “I had every right. And you will watch your tone when you are in this house.”

“Every right! Says who? I’m an adult, and I will make my own decisions.”

He stood now. The Soaring temper that lived within both of us had taken over the room. “Yes, every right. I paid for your education, your apartment, every single article of clothing on your body and hanging in your closet. We had a deal. I would allow you to get the degree of your choice and select your first job. But when the time came, you would put your selfish wants aside and take your position within the company.”

“I was seventeen when I agreed to those terms. I had no idea what I was agreeing to, but I do now. I know what I want to do with my life, and I can’t do it at Soaring Industries. I enjoy event planning. It’s my passion.”

“So join a charity. That isn’t a career.”

“It is a career.
My
career.”

Dad leveled me with his trademark stare. “You mean it was your career. But you are unemployed now and—”

“Actually, I’m not.”

He paused midway to the bar and spun around. “Excuse me?”

“You underestimated me and my work at the Met. My expertise is wanted elsewhere, and I already have another job lined up.” Okay, so maybe not a job…or an interview. But I had a business card and that counted for something, right?

“Doing what exactly?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to delve into this—not now, not ever—but here it was in front of me, and I couldn’t back down. Lifting my chin a touch higher, like I always did when I needed strength, I said, “Wedding planning.”

Mom choked on her wine and began sputtering from where she sat in her armchair, while Dad’s eyes widened in anger and then amusement. “Wedding planning? That isn’t a career. It’s a hobby at best, and even that’s a stretch. You will not take a job as a wedding planner. I can’t even fathom the salary, if there are salaries. It’s very likely an hourly position, and my daughter will not work an hourly job.”

I preferred an hourly job that I’d gotten on my own to dying of boredom working for Soaring in a position far too high for my experience and education, all while everyone in the company either resented me or treated me like a porcelain doll. There was once a time I would have done anything my father asked, but that time had come and gone. “Well, that isn’t your decision to make. It’s mine.”

“Actually it is. If you push this and refuse to join the family business, then we’re done. You want to make your own decisions? Then you can support those decisions and live by those decisions. We will no longer support you.”

Uh oh.

I hadn’t anticipated that he would go that far, and for a moment, I wanted to take it all back, say we should talk this out and come up with a solution that would work for all of us. A new deal. But the truth was he would always want me to join Soaring, and I would always refuse.

So, my eyes burning with tears that I refused to let fall, I stared at my father, the man I respected most in the world and yet the only person who repeatedly let me down.

“Fine.”

“Rick…” Mom started, always the mediator.

“It’s Grace’s call, not mine. I’m offering her the world.”

“No, Dad, you’re offering me
your
world, and I don’t want it.”

“Then this conversation is over.”

I looked up at my father, lost as to when we became this distant or if it had always been this way. “Yeah…I guess it is.”

Chapter Six

Noah

“Hey, Hunter, toss me a rag,” Scarlett Andrews called over from the edge of the bar, her focus on the argument happening at table three. Like always, her white-blond hair was pulled into a high ponytail, her tank top a tad too tight, a mocking scowl forever planted on her face. Men came in and assumed by her hair color and clothes that she was an easy lay, but nothing could be further from the truth. I knew first hand. Long before I hired her at Hunter’s Place, back when I was more mess than good, I tried. And failed. And tried again because I was just that stupid back then.

“What for?” I grabbed a fresh rag from under the bar and walked over to where she stood, then leaned around her so I could see what she was looking at. “Shit. Again?”

“I know,” Scarlett said. “Second one this week.”

“We’re gonna have to put a warning label on that damn table for my boys in town.
Sit at your own risk, dude. You’ve been caught.
”

Scarlett spun around, her head doing that twitchy, angry woman thing in the process. “Excuse me, what did you just say? Because it sounded like you wanted to warn these assholes so they could keep cheating on and breaking these poor girls’ hearts.”

“Calm down. They’re not assholes. They’re kids—Carl Junior there is sixteen. He’s just having a little fun. It’s not like he’s marrying the girls.”

And that was when Scarlett’s eyes popped out of her head, and I realized that I should have tossed her a rag and gone on my way. “Having a little fun, huh? You wouldn’t be saying that if Jonah were a girl, getting her heart broken because the dude she chose to trust can’t keep his thing in his pants and his hands to himself.”

“If Jonah were a girl, I’d teach her to choose better guys than Carl freaking Junior.”

“You just said he wasn’t an asshole.”

“Still not good enough for Jonah.” At that, Scarlett grinned, and I sighed heavily for getting myself into this stupid conversation. “And secondly, I’d have taught her—erm—him, whatever—to throw a punch instead of sitting there and crying about—”

But before I could finish, Daisy Smith threw her Coke at Carl Junior, and suddenly I understood why Scarlett wanted the rag. “Or, she could do that.”

Carl Junior and Daisy jumped up, and then Scarlett was in motion, stepping between them and pointing Carl Junior to the door. Instead of going, he jerked his head toward me and lifted his hands as though to say he needed a little guy support, but Scarlett had worked for me for four years, and I knew better than to argue with her.

I crossed my arms and shook my head, and Carl Junior stomped his way out the door. As soon as he left, the bell on the door still jingling, I walked over with more rags and placed a hand on Daisy’s shoulder. “Carl Junior? Really?”

Daisy pushed her glasses up on her nose and smoothed her red hair down, her bottom lip trembling before she could catch it. This was the problem with owning the busiest restaurant and bar in town. I wasn’t just the man bringing out food or mixing drinks. I was their therapist, and I knew every story in town. She turned her glassy blue eyes on me. “He liked watching
The Flash
with me, and he’s read every John Green novel.
Looking for Alaska
, twice, and everyone knows that’s the best JG book. I thought he was the one.”

“Girl, don’t you go choosing boys for what shows they watch and what books they claim to have read,” said Scarlett. “Choose your boys for their smarts. Who’s the next doctor in town, Hunter? Blake Compton? Yeah, date Blake Compton.”

“Blake Compton?” I scoffed. “He’s worse than Junior.”

Blake might be the next doctor, but he’d also screwed half the cheerleading squad and left a mess for me to clean up two weeks ago. He made Carl Junior look like a saint. Which was one of the things I’d learned early on in Cricket Creek—money didn’t make a man worth a damn, and it sure as hell couldn’t buy a solid moral core.

Daisy grabbed one of the rags and started helping clean the table. “Thanks for not fussing at me for the mess.”

I grinned. “Anytime. Head on home. We’ll take care of this.”

“Thanks, Hunter. You’re the best. Why can’t the boys at school be like you?” She flashed me a grin, before heading out. It took two seconds for the door to close, and then Scarlett burst into laughter.

“What?”

“Why can’t boys be like you? They
are
like you.”

“Shut it.”

“Just calling it like I see it.” Scarlett threw the wet rags into a tub and grinned over at me. “You used to have all the girls in tears. All the time. Don’t know how you slept at night.”

I swallowed and glanced around the bar, the stained shiplap walls and wide hardwood floors, the elk head over the fireplace. There were a thousand memories here, yet I could only ever remember one. And that memory replayed in my mind like a depressing song on repeat. “Yeah, well, not anymore.”

Scarlett’s smile turned into a frown. “I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine.”

She nodded, guilt clear on her face, but I didn’t need it. It’d been five years. Surely the town would eventually stop staring at me with pity. “What about New York?” she asked. “Have fun?”

Immediately, my thoughts went to Grace, the innocence hidden in her eyes, the doubts right there below all that sass. I’d been hooked. One look and I couldn’t walk away. It was so opposite of the man I was today, and yet, it felt so right and so real that I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten the news about Jonah. Would we have woken in each other’s arms, repeated our night that morning? Exchanged numbers? Gone on another date?

Yes, yes to it all. But that wasn’t my life, and it never would be.

“It was fine.”

“So no hot hookups? You didn’t meet anyone?”

I turned back toward the bar. “Nope, not one.”

“You know it’s okay for you to date, right? Jonah won’t mind.”

“Jonah won’t mind what?”

At the small voice, a giant smile spread across my face, and instantly I felt better. I’d contemplated keeping Jonah home from school, but he’d insisted on going, and I’d spent the whole time worrying something bad would happen and he’d come home with his arm in two pieces. Because apparently I’d become a nagging mother instead of a brother. And an idiot.

Scarlett held up her hand for a high five, and he slapped it with his good one.

“How was school?” I asked as I took his book bag and set it on the bar then went around to make him a snack.

“Good, except Zoe and Lily kept arguing over who was going to be the flower girl, which seemed pretty stupid to me. Mrs. Blake eventually put them in opposite corners of the classroom and said she’d call their moms if it continued.”

“Little good that’d do,” Scarlett murmured. “It’s the moms starting that fight.”

True enough.

In my twenty-five years in Cricket Creek, I’d been to plenty of weddings, but none of them held a candle to the upcoming Brockton wedding, and everyone in town wanted to be a part of it.

“Rumor has it Mary Beth hired some fancy wedding planner from New York to manage the whole thing. Said she’d be arriving this weekend to get everything going. You ready to have your place infiltrated?”

I sighed, and once again wondered why I’d agreed to let Mary Beth have the wedding out back. Lindy—her daughter, the bride—had guilted me with that sad, “my dad won’t be here to see it, and he loved this place so much” nonsense. So I relented and had the dock and gazebo stained and hired someone to clean up the bank by the water. And until now, I hadn’t heard much of anything about the details of the wedding, but with it just a few weeks away, I had a feeling that would all change. “What does ‘everything’ involve exactly? I don’t get the fuss. It’s a man and a woman and a kiss, with a bunch of people around as witnesses. Get some barbeque, a decent cake from Shirley’s, and call it a day.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. “And women in town wonder why you’re single.”

“That’s my trick, see. Glad it’s working.” I winked at her as she walked off, and I then put the Brockton wedding and the craze it’d brought to the Creek, and soon my business, out of my mind.

“Homework?” I asked, focusing back on Jonah.

He laid out his assignment for the day, and we dove in, but my thoughts went back to Grace and how someone from her city would be coming to my town. I wondered if there was any chance the wedding planner would know her, or if I’d even ask. But I knew I wouldn’t. And besides, there were millions of people in New York. There was a greater chance that I’d get struck by lightning than that the wedding planner would know Grace. Still…a man could hope.